One codebase or two? We compare cost, performance and long-term maintenance to help you choose the right foundation for your mobile product.
Digitechon Admin1 min read
It's the question every mobile project starts with. After shipping more than twenty apps on both approaches, our honest answer is: it depends — but for most products, cross-platform wins.
When React Native is the right call
If your app is built around content, forms, feeds, commerce or dashboards — the vast majority of business apps — React Native gets you to both stores with one team and roughly 40% less budget. Updates ship over the air, and your web and mobile engineers can share code and talent.
When you should go fully native
Choose Swift and Kotlin when your product lives on the metal: heavy AR, advanced camera pipelines, background audio processing, or deep integration with new OS features the day they launch. In those cases, the abstraction costs more than it saves.
The hidden costs people forget
- Two native codebases mean two sets of bugs, two release cycles and double the regression testing.
- Hiring two specialist teams is slower and pricier than one strong cross-platform team.
- Design drift — keeping iOS and Android feature-identical takes constant discipline.
Our rule of thumb
Start with React Native. Drop to native modules for the 5% of screens that need it. Rewrite fully native only if you hit a wall that profiling proves is real — not one you imagined.
- #react native
- #ios
- #android